Bullshit job + more news

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Is Public Relations A ‘Bullshit Job’? | Holmes Report – If you find yourself in a company that doesn’t use public relations in a way that you find meaningful, and even occasionally inspiring, you’re in the wrong place. That doesn’t mean public relations consulting is a “bullshit job” but it may be an indication that you’re working for a shitty organization. – when I started in agency life I wondered if my new career was a mistake: was it a bullshit job? It didn’t help that I was working with a bunch of dot com startups and enterprise software companies.

I’d previously worked in industry formulating plastics and in the petrochemical industry. The chances are that if you drove a car from the early 1990s to the 2000s, I’d either helped develop part of your car, or helped provide the road surface that you drove on. 

Agency life isn’t like that. It took me years to become comfortable on whether I had a bullshit job. That came as I started to see the difference to businesses that my work did. More related content here

Folli Follie folly | FT Alphaville – interesting read, QCM used the companies own store finder function on their website – in order to determine that Folli Follie’s distribution wasn’t as healthy as claimed

The Brazen Bootlegging of a Multibillion-Dollar Sports Network – The New York Times – interesting article on how Saudi Arabia is bootlegging live sports content as part of its conflict with Qatar. More worryingly it is spreading its piracy into other franchises because it can

Apple’s Jony Ive discusses his ‘best friend’ and the origins of the Apple Watch – Business Insider – interesting that it is ‘un-Jobsian’ as a product

The Great Disappearing Act of the ‘Most Downloaded Woman in the World’ | Mel Magazine – when adult entertainment led the way in profitable business models for the web

Swiss Watchmakers Are Targeting Teens | News & Analysis | BoF – the challenges of dealing with customers too early for brands is an interesting one

Instagram quietly launches payments for commerce | TechCrunch – makes perfect sense

Facebook’s Double Standard on Privacy: Employees vs. Everyone Else – WSJ – just a little bit of old school geekery exists in the Facebook yuppie farm with ‘Sauron’ technology that lets FBers know if someone else has accessed their accounts

Keeping your account secure | Twitter Blog – Twitter dropped the ball big time